June 7, 2024 2:11 PM
Naomi Biden’s emotional testimony about her father’s drug addiction and meeting with him in 2018
By Paula Reid, CNN’s chief legal correspondent
Talking about her father is clearly a very painful topic for Naomi Biden, and despite being a graduate of Columbia Law School, she seemed very uncomfortable on the stand after being called to testify by the defense in the trial against Hunter Biden.
Naomi Biden entered the courtroom with her husband, and First Lady Jill Biden quickly motioned for her husband to sit next to her among Biden family and friends who occupied at least the first two rows of the courtroom.
Naomi Biden’s testimony focused on two occasions in 2018 when she met her father.
The first was in August or September, when she was visiting her father in Los Angeles. Hunter Biden had contacted her to come visit her father while he was in rehab. Hunter Biden offered to make the trip arrangements, and Naomi Biden said she agreed to go even though she hadn’t seen him in a while.
Naomi Biden said she met Biden and his sobriety coach, bringing along her boyfriend, now her husband. “He was the cleanest I’ve seen him since my uncle passed away,” she said.
“I was proud of him and proud to introduce Peter to him,” she said.
On the stand, Naomi Biden came across as sincere and persuasive, like the child of a drug addict.
She then testified about a trip to New York City where her father had come to pick up his car. She described meeting her father in late October and said he “seemed hopeful.” Naomi Biden said her father looked the same as when she met him in Los Angeles.
Under cross-examination by prosecutor Leo Wise, she again testified that she had not seen her father recently because “things had gotten bad since my uncle died” around 2015.
The prosecution got the defendant to admit that he had no idea what the defendant was like when he was using drugs because he had not seen him for a significant amount of time.
Prosecutors appeared to catch both parties off guard when they presented Naomi and her lawyer, Abe Lowell, with a series of text messages she exchanged with her father during a trip to New York.
Naomi Biden appeared a little confused and tongue-tied when confronted with text messages that suggested her father was somewhat erratic and uncommunicative as he tried to release the car.
She didn’t remember the exchange, and seemed increasingly uncomfortable when talking about the early morning text message her father had sent her about trading in the car.
Naomi Biden gave her father a cold hug and kissed him on the cheek as she left the witness stand, and was seen shaking and wiping away tears as she left the courtroom.
